For most practitioners that started out in their back bedroom, the long road to an office with numerous staff, complaining clients and constant interruptions from email and the phone, will be filled with mixed feelings. Fairly early on in the process it becomes evident that having too much or too... read more →

You can almost hear the collective sigh from professional firms as they face up to the count down – 123 days to 31 January 2016: to the filing deadline for the 2015 SA returns. Every year, the same old chestnuts appear on our lists “records not in yet”. Despite various... read more →

Accountants speak their own private language: CGT, liquidity ratios, GAAP, breakeven points et al. It is interesting to consider how much more effectively we could communicate if we filtered out the jargon when talking, especially with clients. For example, you could say: Let’s consider the possible advantages if we could... read more →

On the face of it, two firms merging should give the partners from both firms a chance to reduce fixed costs: cram everyone into one office, savings on IT costs and etc. And of course neither firm will want to shed staff? The aim will be to grow the top... read more →

If you are concerned that you may be involved in the promotion of tax avoidance schemes, in particular that you may be subject to the Promoters of Tax Avoidance Schemes (POTAS) legislation, HMRC have recently updated their guidance on this topic at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/454865/POTAS.pdf The document runs to 114 pages and... read more →

It seems pretty clear that if more output can be produced for a fixed period of labour input, then productivity will have increased. British productivity is currently 28% lower than in France, 29% lower than in Germany and 30% behind the US. These are significant numbers. Although we tend to... read more →

In a recent tax case, David Keyl v HMRC, decided in the Upper Tribunal, the advisors acting for the appellant were unable to reverse a previous FTT decision. The facts of the case were as follows: David Keyl ran a sole tradership which he transferred to a limited company on... read more →

HMRC published a policy paper entitled “Dividend Allowance factsheet” 17 August 2015. It can be downloaded at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dividend-allowance-factsheet The introduction on the GOV.uk website is a bit lightweight: “From April 2016 a new tax-free Dividend Allowance will replace the Dividend Tax Credit. Headline rates of dividend tax are also changing.... read more →

Of course, most practices these days have an electronic document filing system. Beats a room full of filing cabinets. If you switch on the higher level search facilities try searching for the phrase “Inheritance Tax” and see what results you get? For Inheritance Tax you could substitute any words that... read more →

The following quote is attributed to the poet John Lydgate and later adapted by President Lincoln: “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”.... read more →